Galaxy Note 2 - Copy Bug Update


Last week I blogged about a pretty severe flaw in some of Samsung's phones. If you use copy & paste too many times - the phone reboots or resets. So, I ranted and raved on my blog and in the press. Samsung wouldn't respond to me - either through customer support or through their PR […]

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Ephemeral Media


Getting access to my Twitter archive opened my mind to the nature on transience of the media we create. Take, for example, this tweet and image: http://twitpic.com/2dhr3 - Loving #mint09 🙂 — Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) March 23, 2009 Well... ok... fun at the moment it was taken, but does it have any […]

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Solar Update


Another in my occasional series of blog posts about our solar panels. We used both the Energy Saving Trust Solar Power calculator and the Europa Solar Calculator to estimate a generation capacity of between 2,500 and 2,700 kWh per year. We've just done a reading for 21 November to 21 February. Right in line with […]

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Google's Customer Contempt Conundrum


Android logo.

Google's attitude towards its customers is a continuing stain upon its reputation. In an ideal world, no one would ever need to contact customer services. Every step of one's interaction with a company would take place online and be hassle free. All the information would be available on the web. Problems could simply be fixed […]

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Deficiencies in the Twitter Archive


Singing up to twitter after talking to Taptu — Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) February 28, 2008 After Twitter's repeated broken promises, I was unsure if I'd ever get access to my Twitter archive. But, finally, I'm able to extract my data from their systems. There are a number of deficiencies. Of course, it's […]

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Code Club Lessons - The Checklist


Somehow, simultaneously, all 10 children in my CodeClub shoot their hands up. "Terence! Terence! Why doesn't this work? "Help! My bird isn't flapping!" "What do I press to set this variable?" I am run off my feet. I dash from workstation to workstation, troubleshooting the problems. In every case, my response is the same. "Did […]

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The Proximity To Genius Effect


The student approached the master. "Master!" The student wailed, "My code always crashes when I reach this point!" The master was deep in thought. "Show me," she muttered. The student ran the code once more. Lo! It did not crash. "Thus," whispered the master, "is the proximity to genius effect demonstrated." And the student became […]

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Samsung Copy & Paste Bug (AKA Never Trust Samsung)


Samsung phones crash if you use copy & paste more than 20 times. http://t.co/2OnBwo86Shockingly bad engineering. — Terence Eden is on Mastodon (@edent) February 20, 2013 Sounds crazy, doesn't it? If you copy and paste text more than 20 times, your phone will restart! Some people have reported more severe crashes than that - but […]

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Love Thy Vendor


I've really enjoyed learning from Kathy Sierra's talk "Creating the minimum badass user". It's an hour long, but well worth your time. She covers many aspects of product design, but the quote which really resonated with me was this - Zoomed in - This seems so applicable to many "services" these days. Millions spent on […]

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Shakespeare And Emoticons


Scan of the first folio of Shakespeare's work. It mentions Sir Smile. Which is then followed by a colon and close bracket.

Rob Pensalfini has written a delightful blog in which he accuses (or perhaps credits) Shakespeare with inventing the emoticon. He claims that this is within A Winter's Tail, Act I, Scene ii - in the first folio. So, I turned to the First Folio viewer which allows people to see scans of the first printing […]

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